


That Baleful Star

by Kieron_ODuibhir



Series: Cirque de Triomphe [50]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU
Genre: Arabian Nights Ninja Dracula, Drama, Earth-3, Gen, Good!Ra's, Historical context, Mirror Universe, Really Five Hundred Years Old, Slavery, The Pen Is Mightier Than the Sword, Tim Drake is a Talon, mentioned human trafficking, seriously Ra's makes no sense guys, spy vs spy - Freeform, the founding of the Safavid Dynasty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-22
Updated: 2016-01-22
Packaged: 2018-05-15 13:17:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5786563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kieron_ODuibhir/pseuds/Kieron_ODuibhir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The master of the League of Shadows is used to spies and plots against him. His favorite tactic is to recruit the enemy's agents out from under them.</p><p>Owlman's third apprentice is a hard nut to crack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Baleful Star

**Author's Note:**

> In which Ra's al Ghul is emphatically five hundred and seventeen, and the ficcer majored in medieval Middle Eastern history.
> 
> (The views of the narrator are not necessarily those of the writer.)

Ra's stopped short, in the shadowed corridor of one of his most remote compounds. Raised his eyebrows. Made a gesture to the man at his shoulder, bidding him to wait. Continued forward alone, and far more circumspectly.

As he approached his personal study, the bodies of several of his youngest warriors appeared, sprawled upon the floors, felled. Ra's did not pause. He could feel the pulse of life steady from each of them; they could wait. They would be shame-faced enough when they awoke to have been taken unawares, without his forcing them to choose between seeking out medical treatment and skulking about injured, in the absurd attempt to protect him.

Anyone who could reach this corridor without raising an alarm could easily have escaped these adolescent warriors' notice, and would have done, if secrecy had been the primary goal. Equally, anyone who had wished the youths dead had had the opportunity.

Therefore the attack, with its aftermath, was a message. Statement of presence, of power, of enmity without war or else war without enmity. Ra's knew perfectly well who the intruder must be.

Jade might sneak in, if only to test the defenses, but would never break her comrades' bones simply to make a point. Arthur would never come back at all, but if he did he would not open with violence. Nyssa would have left no sign of her presence until she dashed from the shadows to make another attempt on his life. Sandra would have made the first guard she overcame conduct her to an audience with him. Dinah would have made herself far more obvious, long before she penetrated this deeply or defeated anything like this many of his people, and at least some of them would be dead.

Onyx, too, would have made more of a mess, and discriminated between those she had liked and disliked in the days when she had been one of the League, rather than efficiently subduing each in turn in this manner.

And Bruce, brilliant Bruce, worst of all his failures, would have killed everyone he met, if he had come himself. He left Gotham rarely, after all. He would not come _here_ for anything less than utter destruction.

Especially not now that he had a trustworthy right hand to send.

Ra's turned aside from the central corridors, choosing not to enter his own study through its main door, which was placed to be visible from every point in the interior, and hung so as to murmur softly as it swung. He approached soundlessly instead, along an obscure, though not strictly _secret_ , passageway, and silently slid aside a certain ordinary-looking wall panel.

Leaned on his cane in the gap, contemplating the slim figure he had discovered bent over his desk.

He who would become Ra's al Ghul had been very young, when Isma'il Shah had led his red-capped armies from the north. When that boy-king, half-worshipped by his father's army, trailing mystic prophecy, calling himself a second Alexander, had brought under his control all that land the poets called _Iran_ , and portioned it out to make princes of his captains. Younger even than the new-made shahanshah, who had been barely fifteen. But he had been old enough, as kingdoms fell and power shifted, to see that the amirs might have taken power by the sword, but they held it by the pen, through the order of the tax-rolls and the promulgation of new writings, new religious teaching. Through poetry and prayer.

Five hundred years had not dissuaded him from the belief that, ink or steel, each was nothing without the other. To rely on one alone was to be destroyed. And so of course he had appreciated the utility of a desk, long before that item became the commonplace it was today.

This was much of the reason his generally ran to the style of this one: a narrow, functionally elegant roll-top furnishing that stood tucked against the far wall, and had done so for well over a century. The placement meant that he had the hidden entrance directly behind him while he worked, but Ra's was not someone who let himself be distracted by the phantom possibility of being stabbed in the back. Any assassin who could locate this compound, work their way through all the security, evade or silently overcome Ubu, and creep up on Ra's al Ghul unnoticed, in a silent room, _deserved_ their free shot at him. (And very likely didn't need it. Though, of course, it was perfectly possible to be far better at stealth than combat.)

The pale figure clad in scarlet and black was very good, but he was not _that_ good. Paper rustled faintly under his fingertips.

Ra's almost smiled. "Back again, my boy?"

Talon did not startle at the words. It was entirely possible he had felt the eyes on his back and simply declined to acknowledge them. He set aside a stack of papers—Talon was the sort of intruder who, when not being subtle, left your things better organized than he found them, due to his systematic search patterns—and glanced over his shoulder. His masked face gave very little away.

He went back to his task. "Apparently some crucial data was missing last time."

Ra's moved forward, letting the wall slide shut behind him, to trace a leisurely arc which would eventually put him at the end of a divan, in Talon's right peripheral vision. Not quite in the way of either door. Not quite _out_ of the way, either.

"Which was certainly an accident," he said, as his feet and cane fell silently on the heavy woven rugs.

The corner of Talon's mouth twitched. Anger, or amusement, or fear. His hands did not falter in their work. Perhaps the error _had_ been an accident, or perhaps the young bird had wanted an excuse to visit him. He had not _needed_ to be so blatant, after all. He was the stealthiest of Bruce's students so far.

The Demon's Head had met all three of his old pupil's Talons, over the years. They had all been impressive, measured purely by their abilities, quick and canny and strong. Worthy disciples, but Owlman treated them as—not even servants. _Tools_. Ra's had been disgusted by yet another perversion of his teachings, but had not contested it.

Had never thought, until all too recently, that they could be _saved_.

He had some excuse for not thinking it: by the time he had encountered the first of them, the child had been already a horrific automaton, barely over a meter of silent obedience that had sliced through a dozen Shadows in sprays of blood in under a minute, and stood against Ra's blade to blade for half of one. There had been no _unwillingness_ there, no signaled captivity. Only blank-eyed inhumanity, and a dumb loyalty to his master that had led him to take a blade through his own heart without pause.

The second, years later, had seemed little different. Ra's had sensed the anger burning in him on both of their brief meetings, but had not realized what it meant. Not until he learned of the boy's defection to the Jokester's Circus.

It should have been Ra's' place, to offer asylum to the mistreated students of his student. He had far more security to share than did the laughing champion of Gotham and his band. He had offered that sanctuary, of course, belatedly, but did not think he had imagined the coolness with which the young man had declined. _Jason Peter Todd_ did not see Ra's as very different from his old captor. After all, he had never questioned Talon's place at Owlman's side, as faithful Ubu stood by him. It had been abominable, but it had been a thing _done_ ; disciple claimed, weapon whetted.

But the Talons were _not_ weapons. They were children.

Always, they had been children.

The clarity of the mad clown's sight, against the blindness in his own—Ra's had felt the rebuke of it. It had made him thoughtful.

What, Ra's pondered again now as he watched Talon's search, of all that was his was genuine wisdom, and what nothing more than stale habit? It was perfectly acceptable for _others_ to be uncertain where the line fell, or to misjudge him, but _he_ must know, and know truthfully. Hundreds looked to him for guidance. Laziness in his thinking was intolerable.

The difficulty was, there was so much to sort. And much though he strove to remain ever watchful, inwardly aware and outwardly vigilant, he was set in his ways. He was…out of touch, as the expression went.

He was _old._ Not compared to, say, Vandar Adg, who had been the oldest human alive for so long that he seemed sometimes to have shed humanity like a worn-out cloak. Not _that_ old, but older than humans were meant to grow, and it…detached him, in ways that perhaps did his judgment no good. Oh, there was wisdom in distance, never doubt it, in calm detachment, but he could have turned renunciant centuries ago, if he had wished it. That was not his road.

He was Ra's al Ghul, who had taken the name of the most unfortunate of stars. And nobody alive remembered that once he had been Zuhayr ibn Daoud, a merchant's son of Isfahan. (He would have told his children, had they ever thought to ask.)

He could never turn his back upon the world.

Talon had come now to the end of the available documents, drummed a thoughtful claw against the surface of the desk, not quite hard enough to mar the finish, and reached out to twist a mechanism concealed in the decorative scrollwork, so that a small secret compartment slid open.

"Of course," Ra's said mildly, as Talon methodically disarmed the poisoned needle-trap before reaching into the hidden drawer, "I doubt your teacher will find any of what you bring him very useful." He knew exactly what information Talon had stolen from him, on every one of his incursions over the last year and a half. The first time—the first time, the boy had walked away with data on the Pit that Ra's still hated to think of in Bruce's hands, but since then, he had been careful to see that all the truly compromising documents were restricted to the locations Owlman had never known about. None of the information netted by Talon's half-dozen spy missions since had done any real harm.

Some of it had been _inconvenient_ in the extreme, requiring a great deal of work to avoid putting his operatives' lives in excess danger, but there'd been nothing ruining. It was a compromise, like so much in life—small sacrifices as bait, just enough to keep the Owl sending his fierce little chick into the depths of the League, without ever being enough to betray those in Ra's' keeping, merely for the sake of taming a young bird.

Talon had gone entirely still. Broke it, with a motion that looked—oddly like fear, though it could have been some other form of discomfort, and addressed himself to the small roll of papers extracted from the secret compartment.

"That will be inconvenient," he said mildly. "I don't suppose you could inform me which parts are misinformation."

"My dear boy," Ra's smiled. "That would be telling."

Talon glanced at him, and a thin, cold smile flickered for a moment, and was gone.

It was hard to tell whether that was a positive response to his sense of humor, or an acknowledgment of his polite refusal to further facilitate the espionage against himself, or if he was simply being mocked, but it didn't matter. It was a reaction, and that was a victory.

This Talon was his master's deadly right hand, as the others had been, dark-haired and pale-eyed (though Ra's had never seen the eyes of the first child and only assumed that they had been blue), mostly-silent and perfectly obedient. But he was unlike the others, because he was his master's heir.

Not legally—not yet—but Bruce _was_ training the boy to fill his place, holding him up in the eyes of the world as a potential successor. This was not the sixteenth century; if a man of power died without issue, chaos and disaster would not necessarily follow. But even now, a line of succession _meant_ something, and if only for the sake of securing his people's reliance on his house, establishing that impression of stability had been an intelligent move.

There had been no need, though, for the child he raised in sight of the world to also be his deadly hand in darkness. That the boy was his second in both worlds showed that even if it was not _real_ , neither was it a simple pretense.

Perhaps the Owlman had at last learned that _some_ impetus other than fear was necessary, and hoped that avarice and the promise of all that was his would ensure the boy's staunch service. Perhaps he believed that it would simply be harder to give up the life of a great man's heir, than that of a simple weapon.

Or perhaps this was as close as a man like him could come to trying to build himself a family.

At least, Ra's had thought when he had realized that Bruce was, to every appearance, training the boy to succeed him in all things, his hubris did not include a certainty that he could avoid death. But, he had realized very quickly, perhaps it did, and he simply intended to be discrete about his immortality by eventually leaving his overt responsibilities in his Talon's hands, and ruling from deeper shadows.

Ra's had done as much himself more than once, after all. Much of the world at large believed him to be a mere ninety-seven, and he would need to die again soon. And yet he could not _afford_ to die. There was no one living among all his students who could take his place, could exert his delicate influence on international politics or command his respect within the underworld. If only Talia were a son, she might be equal to the role, in another ten or twenty years—but _if_ was useless. She was a daughter, and the world had not changed _that_ much.

"If you don't intend to tell me anything, why must you always speak?" Talon asked lightly, skimming a foreclaw along a line of Urdu he probably could only half-decipher.

"Perhaps I merely value your company."

"Perhaps," Talon allowed, a sardonic note in his child's voice. He photographed a document that was in fact entirely false, meant to lead Owlman down a false trail and, hopefully, into a trap.

"And the superior quality of your conversation," Ra's drawled, with the same gentle pressure that had originally pushed the boy out of monosyllables.

There was a faint gust of breath at the joke, which considering it was Talon should probably be counted as a full-blown laugh. Although it could just as easily have indicated irritation.

This third of Owlman's Talons was in many ways the most human, but he still made it very difficult to remember that he was not merely small, but fourteen. He was…old, almost, in moments. Perhaps that was what endeared him to Ra's, though perhaps it was his precision, or even the way he let a strangely childlike determination leak through his emotional barriers every so often, so that even though Ra's was not sure what the boy wanted, he knew that he wanted it very much.

His freedom, Ra's might have guessed, to judge by precedent. But on the other hand, this Talon was different from the rest. Bruce claimed this boy was a _volunteer._

A volunteer.

When Jason Todd had referred to his time under the Owl's control as _slavery_ , voice thick with bile, Ra's had understood his meaning. And yet it had not resonated with him as with the other listeners—he had never in his life thought of slavery as a positive _good_ , but neither had he ever counted it in the first rank of evils. Set against the butcheries of war, against casual infanticide, against good law twisted to protect the guilty; against treachery, against dire poverty, famine, and plague?

He had seen happiness in slavery. Under a good master, after all, it was little different from any other service. And the bonds of loyalty between master and servant had always seemed to him as valuable and inevitable a part of human life as the love between friends, or between parent and child, or husband and wife.

To scorn that bond now, when it grew unfashionable, would be to spit upon Ubu and all his ancestors, and their unstinting faith and strength. There was _no shame_ in fealty. Only in its abuse.

Slave-soldiers, too, had always been a class all their own. Some of the greatest armies in the world had been built that way; no one who had broken bread with proud, laughing Janissaries and lived under two separate Mamluk dynasties could ever equate the word 'slave' to abjection solely. Ra's did not have the luxury of modern man, to look back in self-congratulation on such ancestral institutions, and abhor them utterly.

Perhaps he _was_ merely out-of-touch, falling behind, but neither did he believe it to be wisdom to let his own opinions change with the changing seasons. That there were, in name, no slaves in the world anymore _was_ a fine thing, in its way, but it was only a very small victory. If only, he thought, _half_ so many people could attach such uncompromising opposition to some of those many evils that still plagued the world, and which would require them to actually _do_ something to oppose them.

The best argument for universal manumission had always been, in Ra's' view, that the only sure way to prevent _bad_ masters was to ensure there were no masters at all. You could say the same of husbands, and yet there was no great moral movement to end marriage. It was not really that he objected to flat abolition in the particular instance of human bondage, but the _precedent_ of dissolving a thing entire to erase its flaws had seemed…unwise. Look at the madness that had taken Paris in the 1790s, or at the entire last century of the Russias, or any of a hundred too-eager revolutions, and see what such catastrophically rapid change had wrought.

You could tear the world and all its structures apart down to their very foundations, and still you would not rout out the canker of injustice. That dwelt in men's hearts.

After all, as Bruce Wayne and all his kind proved, there were a thousand ways for the mighty to grind those who depended upon them into the dust, and suck their lives and dreams away. One man overtly owning another in law might make it easier, but it was hardly a unique circumstance, one utterly unlike all other stark imbalances of power. Were there not millions of women and children enslaved across the world now, sold over and over again daily until their bodies were used up, and then replaced by new victims? And so little effort put into fighting it. Strict personal honor, deeply instilled, and just law justly administered, and the sharp eyes of those who stood by ready to call trespassers against righteousness to account, had _always_ been the only true defenses of the weak. Ra's was not in favor of slavery so much as of the opinion that it was an excessively narrow definition of the problem.

Not that five hundred years of watching nations rise and fall had led him to any true solution to the inhumanity of man.

Sometimes—often—he envied the certainty of youth.

Burning down the world to purge the evil from it was a madman's solution, and a fool's, but sometimes…he felt as though his refusal to take such drastic steps had left him five hundred years useless. Just as Nyssa had said, when she turned from him. Had he made any difference at all? Had order, and structure, patient exertion of influence and spreading of what he thought was wisdom, had it all been for nothing?

It had taken time to ascertain that the mad fool fighting the Owl in Gotham was neither mad nor foolish enough to be an aspirant world-burner. Since he was not, Ra's had extended him support. Their battle was his fault, after all. By his failing, the demon who had taken so much from the clown and his comrades had gained a part of his power. Ra's had _given_ the man power, willingly. Joyfully.

By his failing…every evil in the world sometimes seemed to Ra's to be his own failing, his own weakness. The world had been his to protect for nearly five centuries, and yet look at the state of it.

If he had set himself up as a conqueror four hundred years ago, perhaps, and claimed for himself the right to declare and administer law. If he had taken a firmer stance against any of a thousand evils, and to Shaitan with the consequences. If _even now_ he were willing to resurrect the soldier he had once almost been, and turn his every resource to beating back the human tide and saving the world from his own kind, before it was too late, or….

 _Then_ , perhaps, he could do some more certain good than the ever-so-careful guiding hand he had kept in world affairs all this time.

In a way, Bruce was the reminder that stayed him. The most recent warning of what it was easy to become. It was one thing to contemplate throwing aside humanity as a race, as the blight on the planet that it had come to be. But _people_ …you could not harm the collective without harming individuals. And individual lives…were to be protected.

The red-haired beauty whom Talia had finally managed to win away from Gotham looked at green life and at mankind, and spoke of divided loyalties. It was true: often, in this world, you could not protect everyone. Not even everyone who deserved it.

But there were some whom it was unforgivable to fail. Such as any who were bound to you, to your service and your care. Those entrusted to you.

There was an old saying, approximately as old as Ra's himself, though he had not known it in his youth, which went like this: _Master and pupil are not two._

It was true, he knew sometimes. It was the best of immortalities, he thought when watching his many protégées, when watching his brave children taking on the world. Far more worthy a thing than the mere failure to die he had clung to so long, in defiance of common sense and often his own inclinations.

Then he looked at Bruce Wayne and reconsidered, since _being alive_ meant _being able to do things_ , such as amend your own damnable mistakes.

If he were to die, in truth as well as in appearance, he would be leaving his failures to his heirs, to mend his faults as they could. And that would be _appallingly_ irresponsible.

Ra's had always considered himself a good judge of character. It would have cost him less to give up that fairly important part of his self-image than it cost to face the truth that, while he had been deceived by Bruce Wayne, he had _not_ been mistaken about him.

…he had seen himself in the young man. The sharpness of his mind. The rage in his heart. The indomitable iron of his will.

Perhaps the strength, he had thought, to survive the Pit.

He had seen in Bruce Wayne that youth he had once been, angry, searching. One part soldier, one part scholar, unable to choose between them, proud as any prince, and always straining, unconsciously, into the distance, to that faint echo of the song of the world that had teased at him from earliest childhood. Something had settled in him, when he had finally followed that unheard note deep into a cave along the southern rim of the Dasht-e Kavir, and first gazed into the roiling green of Life-In-Death and Death-In-Life and Life-Triumphant-In-Defiance, when he had first begun to understand his purpose. Had felt the shell that had contained and constrained him giving way, had felt that he _lived._ He had thought that he could give that to Bruce, who had reminded him so deeply of himself.

He had been deceived. Bruce had already found his purpose, even then. The concern for the world upon which the Shadows were built was nothing to him. They had merely been a tool; neither the first nor the last of the many Bruce Wayne had used and discarded in his quest for absolute control.

Ra's had been so anxious to find a suitable successor who was not someone he loved that he had closed his eyes to anything that might have suggested that his candidate was less than worthy. That was the key to using anyone—playing on their desires. Bruce had taken pains to be exactly what Ra's wanted for as long as he had a use for him, and then he had walked away.

It was petty, to wish the same betrayal on him.

Fortunately, that was not the _only_ reason Ra's had spent three years courting this boy's esteem.

Neither was it merely guilt that moved him, he was sure of that. Nor the certainty that Gotham's madman would never rescue _this_ one from what he had become. He felt a duty to the boy, certainly, and would not have invested so much effort in him if he had not, but that was not what made him so resolved.

Master and pupil were not two, but in this as in everything, Bruce had found some way to twist the spirit of the law and force it to serve him, and…perhaps Ra's was simply curious to see what part of this Talon was his master's will moving behind his eyes, and what was his own. And what he would be, without the Owl's grip wrapped around his spine. The young man Todd was so unlike the Talon he had been.

Did Bruce ever think of him, Ra's wondered, when he looked at this boy. The boy who had sought him out, to serve at his side and learn his secrets. The boy he was raising as his heir. Did he ever think of the trust Ra's had placed in him, once? Was he prepared for a viper's bite, or did he believe he had secured his weapon's loyalty?

Ra's moved a little forward, stepping away from the divan.

"Why do _you_ believe I bother with you, then?" he ventured idly, as Talon stowed the contents of the secret drawers, and considerately reset the traps.

"I wouldn't presume to guess."

"Please."

"Well," Talon said, suddenly acerbic, glancing over his shoulder at Ra's for a second before returning to his task, "I _do_ occasionally wonder if I should preemptively look up the number of some kind of 'bad touch' helpline."

Ra's could not properly appreciate this flare-up of character, because the joke did not sound quite enough like a joke.

He was a collector of people. It was a tendency that had begun long ago, for a dozen reasons, and been in constant operation for centuries. He liked to think of himself as philanthropist and patron, picking out potential gems who had no one else to help them shine. His League, his Foundation, all the other places to which he helped his various protégées find their way, could be considered merely cabinets in which he kept his collection.

The dozens and scores of them were his shield and support, a network of great practical use that also made it safe to have loved ones, because no matter who he lost—and eventually he lost everyone—he would not be alone. It let him remain tied to humanity without the constant wrack of giving too much of his heart away to those who could not help but break it, in the end.

And yes, he wanted the boy. Wanted to collect him and keep him on a metaphorical shelf close by his side—hoped, perhaps, knowing he shouldn't, that _this_ boy could be the one he needed, but even if he was not, wanted to cultivate that talent and brilliance and not let it go to _waste_ like this, doing no good to anyone, himself least of all. Wanted him away from Bruce and Gotham and his ill-use, wanted him as _his_ student. He had not been subtle on that point.

Talon had no reason to trust him. He moved in a world of shadows and cruelties. And that was such a simple form of _want_. Self-explanatory. Could he be blamed, if that was how he interpreted a show of interest? As _desire?_

"Do you think that of me, boy?" Ra's asked, careful to let none of his hurt into his voice. The four seconds of silence after the remark and the slowness with which he spoke were emotion enough. It could easily have been merely a barb, light and meaningless, meant to goad him; it would be a mistake to take it too seriously.

Talon twitched a shoulder. "Of course not," he said smoothly. Straightened a stack of papers unnecessarily, and let his hands fall to his sides. He had what he had come for.

He would have to pass near Ra's to reach either exit.

"Your skills are more than reason enough to offer you membership in the League," Ra's told him. Not kindly, because the boy trusted kindness even less than he did everything else.

For the first time, Talon turned fully to face him. Expressionless again, but his unwavering gaze sent its own message. "I am loyal to my teacher."

And the remarkable and frustrating thing was, Ra's honestly could not tell if that was the truth or not.

He was certain, however, that Bruce did not deserve for it to be so.

"Loyalty is a great virtue," was all he said.

Talon quirked an eyebrow, just a little. "And were I false to him, how could you trust that to you I was true?"

Because we would earn it, Ra's did not say. Because we would be true to you, if you were one of our own, and not ask more of you than you were willing to give. Because even if you _did_ come to Bruce of your own will, even if you asked him to make you Talon, I cannot believe that what he has done to you was what you wanted.

He would not say it, because it was sentiment and foolishness, and untrue. In truth, trust in someone like this boy would be long in the building, and easily broken. _His_ trust in the League would take even longer. And very possibly, he would betray them before either bond had the chance to form.

"Nevertheless," was what Ra's said instead. "If strife ever should come between you and your teacher, I will offer you asylum. Nothing will harm you under our care."

Talon's lips twitched again, before falling back into their line, and he turned his eyes away, skating over the divan and chairs that took up the third of the room at Ra's' back. "You can't even keep me out." Something like scorn layered itself into the toneless voice.

"My boy," Ra's told him, leaning his weight more obviously on his cane and letting himself smile slightly, "I think you are overestimating how hard I try."

A waver. New tension in the shoulders, pulling back from a weak moment. A faint turn of the head, as though looking through the wall at something distant from the two of them. "You _wanted_ me to discover Talia's little secret, then?" he inquired. "Less soft than I thought you, perhaps."

Unfamiliar tension coiled in Ra's stomach, as his perception of the entire night and everything in it suddenly, vertiginously altered.

 _Talon had found the nursery._ Somehow. The half-hidden suite of rooms that lay in exactly the direction he was gazing now, a direction he had never before had cause to explore. The new security measures had altered his route, or he had overheard some hint, and investigated. And now he knew. Not merely of the child's bare existence: already he resembled his father. Enough to recognize in the cradle. Talon _knew_.

…he would not have bothered to leave the guards in the corridor alive, if he had killed Ra's' grandson. That certainty enabled Ra's to keep his expression calm, to hold his position rather than attacking, or turning his back on his opponent in his haste to run to the child's side and count his every precious breath.

Ra's al Ghul was used to his family dying. The only other option had been to give up having family at all, and so he had adjusted to the certainty of loss. But that was for the aged who had had their time, or warriors daring death to take them. Not the little ones.

He had lost small children and grandchildren before. There was no grief like it.

He should have known better than to house the boy here, even for a month. This base was remote and secure and known by very few, yes, but among those few was counted _Owlman_. It was one of the staging grounds for the long game he was playing with Talon, who although he was a boy was equally an assassin. He should have _known better_.

Tension coiled in him, but he expressed none of it. His face remained blandly pleasant. The fingers on his cane did not tighten. "A handsome little secret, I am sure you agree."

Talon was, typically, expressionless. This one less so than those who had come before, but that was more because his role required that Bruce not crush all the humanity out of him, so that he could play the child plausibly for the public, rather than any personal lack of talent for concealment. In exchange for this increased emotive tendency, he was also the best at misdirection. He was, however, only fourteen.

Now, he held still, his mouth pulled together in a moment of voluntarily broadcast consideration, and flicked his eyes at Ra's behind the barely-concealing mask.

"Does he have a name?"

 _Of course he has a name,_ someone else might have snapped, insulted. The boy had passed his fourth birthday. Nothing human went unnamed that long. "Damianos."

"Conqueror," Talon mused. "Because naming Talia for fertility worked out so well," he added.

Ra's chuckled. He had had his own doubts about the name, considering the boy's father's obsessions, but it hadn't been his to choose. If Talia felt that a name that spoke of _taming_ and _subjugating_ was appropriate to an heir of their house—he would try not to take it as a prophecy. His daughter was, after all, stupid only in one very specific way. The name he had taken for himself centuries ago spoke of gluttony and misfortune, after all. Perhaps _Damianos_ meant only that the boy would be gentle.

"If her naming led to his birth," was all he said, "I would not change it given the chance."

Talon cocked his head, interested. "You don't want me to kill him, then?"

With age and cultivated inscrutability, it became easier and easier to convince those around you that your every action and their every reaction was part of a complex scheme into which they had fallen. Normally, it was unutterably amusing to pass his errors off as subtle manipulations.

On this occasion, it was somewhat less so.

Especially because, if you discounted that the end objective was _his grandson's death_ , the boy's inference that he had been led to the information so that he would take action without Ra's being directly responsible sounded like exactly the sort of thing he _would_ do.

He shifted his grip on the handle of his cane. With most people, he would merely have looked at them in blank, implied condescension, until they came up with their own secondary explanation, but it had taken three years of careful tending to train this Talon into the idea of conversing with him as a first reaction. Too much silence risked alienating that response. "Come, now. I think more highly of your intelligence than _that_."

An almost imperceptible relaxation. "Yes," the boy agreed, and watched Ra's again, trying to divine his true purpose.

Talon thought his killing his potential rival as the Owl's heir was the _reasonable_ thing to expect of him.

He had not done it.

Most likely, because he knew that if his master ever learned what he had done, his vengeance would be terrible—and Talia would have no reason to keep it secret, with her precious child beyond all protection. Or perhaps he had hoped to barter with Ra's for the assassination, and gain some extra advantage by it besides neutralizing the competition. Perhaps he thought that a spare Wayne heir, whose existence he knew of and Bruce did not, was more likely to be useful than a threat to his position, for the moment.

Perhaps he even disliked killing children. Even mercy was far more plausible a motive than loyalty, when it came to something as threatening to his very existence as this. Ra's was certain he knew this Talon at least well enough to be sure of that.

"I could threaten you with it," Talon said at last. "Demand information without falsification, in exchange for hiding the child."

Ra's raised his eyebrows. "And am I to believe this knowledge I deny you is worth the risk of my old student learning what we keep from him?" Never mind that there was no way completing his assigned mission was worth enough to the boy to give up his leverage over the Demon's Head for it; he was probably only testing what sort of concessions that leverage could wring. Ra's was softer on this boy than he perhaps deserved, but he was not an easy mark.

Talon's lips narrowed by a hair's breadth. "I see."

Ra's wondered if he did.

His House had more to fear and less to gain than Talon did, from the Owlman learning of the hidden child. And if Talon failed to betray the secret, and his silence was discovered, the consequences…. The boy was crafty. It all depended on what he thought he stood to gain or lose.

By the gimlet look on Talon's face, he was having similar thoughts about Ra's.

"Is he a weapon against the Court?"

Ra's stood stolidly in negation. "Damianos is an heir of the House of al Ghul."

Talon's mouth twitched in more distinct scorn. It was not undeserved. The title of heir was perhaps a meaningless one, in a House in which the patriarch lived on and on, and the children died and died. Ra's two adult grandchildren lived at an intentional remove from him, Nyssa's line had been extinguished at Dachau, and the descendants of his first daughter did not even know his name.

But still Ra's named heirs, and still he searched for a true successor.

He was old. He had been old for most of his life. Even when he was freshly revitalized and did not seem past his prime to the naked eye, he was old. It was the natural order of things that he should pass away and leave the world to those who came after him.

But he had his work. He had his _duty._ And ever since the first of his sons had perished screaming, since his eldest daughter had gone into the Pit mortally wounded and emerged a clawed, hissing thing that hungered for human flesh as though his name had cursed her fate, with eyes that did not know him—so long as the life-force of the Earth continued to grant him more years, he would spend them as well as he knew how.

Amina's silence, Dusan's sorrow, Nyssa's rage, Talia's unwavering determination…each of his children had grown differently from the others, and the lessons learned from one had often been wrong for the next, but he had done his best. If his shadow stretched too far over them, well. There were worse fates.

There were so _many_ worse fates.

"After the age of four," Talon remarked—blandly, as though he thought the vase in the corner might find this information of some slight interest. "The older a child becomes, the higher its chance of dying in the attempt to become Talon."

 _Aha._ This would have seemed like nonsense, if you did not know that _becoming Talon_ referred to gaining the shadow killer's signature invincibility against all wounds. A survival test that grew more difficult, the farther the tested grew from infancy. Paradox. Ra's waited.

"His chances of survival will never be better."

Ra's let his lips thin. "Damianos is an heir of the house of _al Ghul,_ " he repeated. His, not Owlman's. He would not let the boy be taken. If he wished to endanger a young warrior in pursuit of greater power, there was ever and always the Pit. He might have sworn never to risk that again, but it would _still_ be better than risking one of his House to the alchemical tortures used by evil strangers, to forge weapons out of children's bones.

It was good to know, however, that Talon at least believed his master would subject his own blood heir to the process, given the chance. Bruce after all wore the armor that had been the Talon's for nearly two centuries before he claimed the place of King over the whispering Court. Ra's had always suspected that Bruce had wanted that instant regeneration very much, and wondered why the man had not claimed it. Had thought perhaps the cycle of new Talons in spite of the seeming immortality betrayed long-term complications that arose from the process.

Now he knew. Bruce had always been arrogant, but not, it seemed, enough to believe he could defeat such odds. He was—minor irony—too _old_.

Talon had just made Ra's a gift of a secret of the Owls. Repayment for the one he had stolen, perhaps. It could of course be a falsification, like so many of the supposed facts the boy was carrying back to Gotham, but Ra's did not think so.

It would be impolitic to the point of cruelty to thank him. Talon walked very near the edge of betraying the loyalty he had avowed, with such a revelation.

…he must have been close to eleven, when he endured the process. "You had great luck to survive," Ra's observed.

"Luck?" repeated Talon. Another thin smile that seemed very nearly amused. "I suppose I did."

And that answered enough of Ra's most pressing questions about this Talon. Whatever was the truth of his loyalty, this remained: his master did not value his life, and he knew it.

Even if he _had_ begun to learn better than to destroy his acolytes in the attempt to drive the human flaws from them, Bruce would be no suitable teacher. A spying mission like this one was one thing; no twelve-year-old should be asked to serve as an assassin. Even for the best of causes, even if there were _no one_ else, it would be all but unforgiveable—and Bruce did not have the best of causes.

Even if he _had_ , he would be perfectly capable of doing his own killing.

Any child deserved better than to be treated as a disposable blade.

"Timothy," Ra's said, as the boy passed him on the way to the sliding panel he had used as entrance, feeling for a moment every one of his five hundred and seventeen years. "Take care."

Talon was still for a fraction of a second, and then the old man heard the nearly-soundless puff of air that he had come to understand as faint derision for his sentimentality. Or, considering the acts of which the boy believed him capable, perhaps for his hypocrisy.

It didn't matter.

When you grew old, everything echoed. Every person walked through your heart swathed in the ghosts of those who had come and gone before them. You couldn't stop it, any more than you could stop every year from seeming shorter than the one before it, every new child from rocketing up and burning out brief and breathtaking as a firework. For a long time, he had told himself he had control of such impulses, that sentiment had no hold on his decisions.

He had learned long ago that such lies did him no service.

"Try not to let too many assassins slip past your guards," Timothy answered. And stepped into the passageway. He would doubtless exit through the first accessible window after turning right, rappel down the cliff face, and use a glider to get off the mountain in a hurry. The drafts were unpredictable, but Talon of all people could afford the risk of a crash.

Talon slipped into the shadows, going home to his master, keeping his own council, and Ra's smiled to himself, a little. Left the study through the obvious door, collecting Ubu from where he had stood patiently in the corridor; with the ease of long practice ignoring the man's dubious look that hoped he knew what he was doing. For now, it was time to see to the well-being of his unconscious students, and to his sleeping grandson.

**Author's Note:**

> The former Shadow trainees Ra's listed are all canon. In order: Cheshire, Merlyn, Nyssa Raatko (Holocaust survivor and the Jason Todd of the al Ghul family), Lady Shiva, Black Canary, and Onyx, a League rogue whom Batman endorsed but did not adopt. (She was black and bald and pretty kickass; she and Orpheus worked together before Bruce and Steph got him killed.) Ra's' 'real name' I made up, but he has to have had one because Ra's al Ghul is not a real person name, any more than Batman is. I have done my best with DC's Orientalist gibberish; a well-off member of the Arab minority in newly Safavid Persia seemed like the best match I was going to get with the data we have, and also I liked it. Isma'il Shah as his first example of leadership would explain _so much_ about Ra's.
> 
> Btw, the old guy has no basis for comparison, but between his efforts, Black Adam's, and President and First Lady Wilson, the Middle East in his dimension is actually untold leagues more stable than in ours. The environmental situation is also better. The human trafficking stats are, however, taken from our world.
> 
> Anyway, look! It's Tim and Damian! :D


End file.
